tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/jazz-epistles-51732/articlesJazz Epistles – The Conversation2021-01-23T15:12:43Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1356332021-01-23T15:12:43Z2021-01-23T15:12:43ZJonas Gwangwa embodied South Africa’s struggle for a national culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326055/original/file-20200407-96658-th1gf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Moeletsi Mabe/The Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music is not a zero sum game with only one ‘best’. But if you seek to name one musician whose life embodies the South African people’s struggle for a national culture, it must be trombonist, composer and cultural activist <a href="https://theconversation.com/jonas-gwangwas-music-and-life-embody-the-resistance-against-apartheid-118792">Jonas Mosa Gwangwa</a>, who was born on 19 October 1937 in Orlando East, Johannesburg, and died on 23 January 2021 in Johannesburg aged 83.</p>
<p>Through 65 years on stage, Gwangwa’s playing <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-appreciation-of-south-africas-jazz-stalwart-jonas-gwangwa-91670">contributed</a> to every genre of South African jazz. Overseas, he was hailed as player, producer and composer. Yet he chose to step away from mainstream success for ten years, leading the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/amandla-cultural-ensemble-1978?page=2#!slider">Amandla Cultural Ensemble</a> of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress</a> (ANC) to win hearts for the anti-apartheid <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272460272_Jonas_Gwangwa_Musician_And_Cultural_Activist">struggle</a> everywhere and present a vision of what post-apartheid national culture could be. </p>
<p>He battled painful injury (accidents shattered the same femur three times), was hunted for his life by the regime’s forces and experienced both the heyday of South African liberation culture and the far more ambivalent times since. </p>
<p>Throughout, he cherished a half-century-plus, love affair with his wife Violet, and brought his family – scattered across half the globe – home intact to a free South Africa. Violet’s death, only a few short weeks before his, had left him and the rest of the family devastated. </p>
<h2>The little bebopper</h2>
<p>Gwangwa started his career in the 1950s in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/father-trevor-huddleston">Father Huddleston</a> Band at St Peter’s College in Johannesburg. When instruments were allocated he hoped for a clarinet, but was shy to object to the offered trombone. </p>
<p>There was music in the family, lessons at school, and from American jazzmen on the bioscope screen at the Odin Cinema in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/11/story-cities-19-johannesburg-south-africa-apartheid-purge-sophiatown">Sophiatown</a>. From <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dizzy-Gillespie">Dizzy Gillespie</a>, the schoolboy Gwangwa borrowed his lifetime trademark: a jaunty black beret. He became, in his own words “this little bebopper”.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa on stage in Johannesburg in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Veli Nhlapo/Sowetan/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Politics shaped Gwangwa too. The 1954 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-education-and-racist-compartmentalizing-education">Bantu Education</a> Act ended Father Huddleston’s St Peters, but not before the band had played at the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">adoption</a> of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">Freedom Charter</a> in Kliptown. He said </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everybody shared a perspective – you didn’t even classify it as ‘being political’ … nobody separated the music from the politics.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Because <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/arts/music-an-essential-element-in-the-voice-of-jazz.html">trombone</a> was a scarce sound in African jazz bands, Gwangwa’s tricky <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/bebop">bebop</a> chops caught the ears of the elite <a href="http://samap.ukzn.ac.za/audio-people/jazz-dazzlers">Jazz</a> <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/benni-gwigwi-mrwebi">Dazzlers</a>. His vision expanded with the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525696698/the-legacy-of-the-jazz-epistles-south-africas-short-lived-but-historic-group">Jazz Epistles</a>, whose <em><a href="https://www.discogs.com/The-Jazz-Epistles-Jazz-Epistle-Verse-1/release/1934732">Jazz Epistles: Verse One</a></em> became the first modern jazz album from a black South African <a href="https://www.wbgo.org/post/jazz-epistles-holy-moment-revisited-abdullah-ibrahim-checkout#stream/0">band</a>.</p>
<p>That was the first of several firsts. Gwangwa was co-copyist for the first all-black South African stage musical, <em><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">King Kong</a></em>, travelling with the show to London and starting a lifelong love affair with the stage musical format: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Words, action, and music! I became fascinated with just how you … put all those pieces together.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Seven curtain calls</h2>
<p>London contacts helped Gwangwa secure a place at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. There, sharing a flat with <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>, his meagre allowance went as often on gig tickets as food, as he imbibed mainstream classics and the new ‘<a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-free-jazz">free jazz</a>’. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Continental Records</span></span>
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<p>Equally active in politics, he helped organise South African students in America, and served as first eye on the text drafted by old schoolfriend, poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a>, of Miriam Makeba’s 1963 anti-apartheid <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2008-11-10/miriam-makebas-historic-speech-remembered">address</a> to the UN.</p>
<p>He worked with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/nov/11/miriam-makeba-obituary">Makeba</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/harry-belafonte-and-the-social-power-of-song">Harry Belafonte</a>, most famously as arranger, adapter and conductor for the 1965 Grammy-winning Best Folk Album <em><a href="http://www.miriammakeba.co.za/releases/An-Evening-With-Belafonte-Makeba-1965">An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba</a></em>: another first. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">RCA Victor</span></span>
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<p>Then came residencies, film scores, multiple recordings across genres, musical direction, and tours; with the Union of South Africa, and with <a href="http://www.herbalpert.com">Herb Alpert</a>, when the trombonist won seven curtain calls for a barnstorming solo on his own <em>Foreign Natives</em>. Despite its painful interruption midstream by the reckless driver who first crushed his leg, Gwangwa’s American jazz star was rising.</p>
<p>But he had loyalties bigger than the stage. </p>
<h2>This is a liberation movement!</h2>
<p>In 1980, Gwangwa answered the call from ANC President <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">OR Tambo</a> to scour the <a href="http://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/4828">military camps of Angola</a> for young talent to establish the campaigning Amandla Cultural Ensemble. The call was too politically important to ignore, and the opportunity to create an entire stage show excited Gwangwa so much that “sometimes … I couldn’t sleep”.</p>
<p>He spent most of the next decade between Amandla (rehearsing in Angola and touring the world) and Botswana (with his family and <a href="https://learnandteachmagazine.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/the-jonas-gwangwa-story/">contributing</a> to the local cultural scene with the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/medu-art-ensemble">Medu Arts Ensemble</a>). In both settings he was an innovator. Botswana musicians say he helped build their professionalism and shifted their focus towards indigenous inspirations. In Amandla, he consciously re-visioned traditions, casting female performers in previously all-male traditional dance roles: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why not? … this is a liberation movement! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some cynical analysts suggest Amandla’s winning musical arrangements and dramatic stage interludes simply prettied-up struggle culture for overseas audiences; they miss the point. Gwangwa’s love for the struggle was genuine and deep, never cosmetic – and he couldn’t have written an unattractive tune if he tried.</p>
<p>Gwangwa believed that political theatre deserved exactly the same high aesthetic standards as any other stage performance, and according to the memories of other Amandla performers, he enforced these relentlessly at rehearsal. Audiences everywhere responded to that combination of passion and professionalism. </p>
<p>Amandla’s impact put the Gwangwa family home on the SADF hit list for the <a href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/gaborone_raid.htm?tab=report">1985 raid on Botswana</a>. </p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MCA Records</span></span>
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<p>It was razed (fortunately the occupants were elsewhere) and the regime’s hunt did not cease. Roots were pulled up again, for London, then America. During that uneasy, unsettled time, Gwangwa scored another first: an Oscar nomination (and more) for his <em><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/cry-freedom-1987">Cry Freedom</a></em> film score, co-composed with George Fenton.</p>
<h2>For the people</h2>
<p>Finally <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2011-09-17-what-ive-learnt-jonas-gwangwa/">home again</a> in 1991, some recognition arrived: <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/order-ikhamanga-0?page=14#!slider">Orders of Ikhamanga</a> for both him and Amandla; commissions for various official and pan-African causes; honorary degrees and more. </p>
<p>Yet he still constantly struggled to earn from tours, shows and recordings, encountered record label problems over material deemed “political” – and ‘state composer’ was not who he wanted to be. Although he was committed to the new South Africa and happy to contribute, he really “wanted to be on the ground with the guys,” he told me in 2019 from his sickbed, “doing something important”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jonas-gwangwas-music-and-life-embody-the-resistance-against-apartheid-118792">Jonas Gwangwa's music and life embody the resistance against apartheid</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>He was saddened by globalised, commoditised official perspectives on the arts, and by the sidelining of everything Amandla had tried to build. His music had always explicitly been his weapon, and </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are still within an era of struggle.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gwangwa in 2007 in Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images</span></span>
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<p>In June 2019, Gwangwa was struck by a serious illness that left him bedridden. He struggled valiantly towards recovery and was never bitter. </p>
<p>Interviewing him for his forthcoming biography, I asked him what he was proudest of. “Amandla. Because it involved all the things in music that excited me the most, and gave me the opportunity to bring them together … for the most important reason possible: it was for the people.” <em>Hamba Kahle umkhonto</em> (spear). </p>
<p><em>Ansell is the editor of a planned authorised biography of Jonas Gwanga.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell has been assisting the Gwangwa family in editing a biography of Jonas Gwangwa which has not yet been finalised for publication.</span></em></p>The revered trombonist, composer and cultural activist never wished to be ‘the state composer’ but remained political until the end, in service of the people.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1187922019-06-18T13:47:39Z2019-06-18T13:47:39ZJonas Gwangwa’s music and life embody the resistance against apartheid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279964/original/file-20190618-118543-1vjuhx7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Karmann/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently sent <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-wishes-jonas-gwangwa-full-recovery-5-jun-2019-0000">good wishes</a> to hospitalised trombonist/composer Jonas Gwangwa, it represented far more than a routine official courtesy. Even before he became president, Ramaphosa relished the South African jazz that spoke for and of the country’s liberation struggle. So it was no surprise that during inauguration speech in 2018 he famously <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-12-20-cyril-ramaphosas-2018-thuma-mina-moments/">invoked</a> a Hugh Masekela song, <em>Thuma Mina</em>, isiZulu for “send me”. And there are few musicians whose opus embodies the political spirit of South African liberation more vividly than the 81-year-old Gwangwa.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s ‘Thuma Mina’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Resistance was the sub-text of Gwangwa’s early musical endeavours. The Jazz Epistles, the first outfit to foreground his voice as composer and player, was also the first black ensemble in South Africa to record an LP. Black bands had previously been confined to the territory of the single, for the country’s equivalent of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/race-record">“race records”</a> market. Race records were made exclusively by and for African Americans, especially from the 1920s to the 1940s. </p>
<p>The Jazz Epistles’ repertoire asserted many characteristics that apartheid cultural policy suppressed: non-tribalism, originality and urban sophistication. But it also spoke of musicians’ conditions of production, in the Kippie Moeketsi track <em>Scullery Department</em>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jazz Epistles track ‘Scullery Department’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This song was a dedication to themselves and their peers: good enough to play for elite white patrons, but forced to take their interval meal on the steps of the back kitchen.</p>
<h2>Dinner apartheid</h2>
<p>That meal-break apartheid was only one aspect of much broader repression. Gwangwa was born in 1937 in Orlando East, the first township of Soweto, formally founded six years earlier. As Gwangwa grew up, Orlando exposed him to both the oppressions suffered by every black community – police raids, arbitrary arrests, pass laws and impoverished amenities – but also to an intensely political cultural milieus. </p>
<p>Orlando writers, visiting journalist Anthony Sampson noted in his essay <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/asjul59.9/asjul59.9.pdf">Orlando Revisited</a>, were very clear about their African nationalist identity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘We don’t just want to be writers,’ said Zeke [Ezekiel Mphahlele], ‘we want to be non-white writers’ – using the word in the proud way of people who are used to being non-every thing – non-Europeans, non-voters, non-travellers, non-drinkers, non-starters.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Gwangwa began to work regularly in music, he was exposed to the routine brutality of the police. He recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes those <em>boere</em> boys just get so mean and take [your pass] from you… Otherwise they would make you perform in the middle of the night. In the middle of the street you’d be tap-dancing at 3 am.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The vivid memories of that and more –- the segregated audiences for the musical King Kong; the privilege of white producers and promoters –- travelled with Gwangwa into exile first in London and then at the Manhattan School of Music. </p>
<p>When he arranged singer Miriam Makeba’s Grammy-winning 1965 <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Belafonte-Makeba-An-Evening-With-BelafonteMakeba/release/2544923">duo album</a> with American artist Harry Belafonte, he was not simply supporting a fellow South African; he was participating in the politics of the project. He became impatient with the sometimes shallow understanding of the music’s American patrons: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because it was those back-to-Africa days, so you had to explain that it takes more than an Afro and a dashiki to be an African, you know? You have to think it and feel it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>ANC talent</h2>
<p>So when in the early 1980s then ANC President OR Tambo called him to Angola to help develop the raw performance talent with which the ANC training camps teemed into a touring performance show for the movement, he did not hesitate. He brought everything he had learned about production and stagecraft in the States to bear on the project: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I knew I could create a show that would have universal appeal: the musical structure is very simple, the rhythm will get you, the dances are attractive…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Initially, the thought was to have a presentation of struggle songs; but Gwangwa and his team created a full musical. Theatrical interludes sandwiched the songs; the script was updated when political events (or musical fashions) in South Africa overtook it. </p>
<p>After a camp vehicle accident seriously injured his leg, Gwangwa began to spend more time in Botswana with his other band, Shakawe. There were politics there too: the politics of nonracialism and African regional solidarity, reflected in the mixed personnel of players, the outreach activities of Shakawe’s umbrella parent, the Medu Arts Ensemble, and repertoire. That spoke of both current regional events, political themes, and the rich wellspring of Setswana tradition in songs such as the wedding anthem <em>Kgomo di Tsile</em>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Kgomo di Tsile.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>South African military raids and death squads in the mid-1980s had forced Gwangwa away once more, to London. It was appropriate that Gwangwa was George Fenton’s collaborator on the soundtrack to the Steve Biko movie, <em>Cry Freedom</em>, which went on to be nominated for an Oscar and to win an Ivor Novello and other awards.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Cry Freedom.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Exile</h2>
<p>The politics of Gwangwa’s music have stayed constant over the years, and are also apparent in the eight albums he has released in South Africa since returning from 30 years of exile. Reflecting on that, he <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2011-09-17-what-ive-learnt-jonas-gwangwa/">told</a> journalist Nechama Brodie: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Miriam Makeba organised me a Guinea passport. When that expired I got a Zambian travel document, then a Tanzanian one, then a Ghanaian passport. At airports you get immigration queues for ‘locals’ and for ‘others’. I had always been one of the others. Then, one day, I got my South African passport. And it was valid for 10 years. It was like: wow, you know, yeah. Hallelujah!</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa’s ‘Freedom for some’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But his lyrics have never been uncritical praise singing. As he regularly sang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Freedom for some is freedom for none.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps that, as much as <em>Thuma Mina</em>, could also be a leitmotif for the Ramaphosa presidency?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The politics of Jonas Gwangwa’s music have stayed constant over the years, and are also apparent in the eight albums he has released in South Africa since returning from 30 years of exile.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1124252019-02-25T13:59:16Z2019-02-25T13:59:16ZDorothy Masuku: Africa has lost a singer, composer and a hero of the struggle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260698/original/file-20190225-26152-1bbnpac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dorothy Masuku composed and recorded close to 30 singles, several of which achieved major hit status.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Madelene Cronje/ Mail & Guardian</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dorothy-masuka">Dorothy Masuku</a> (Masuka was her stage name) has <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-02-23-veteran-musician-dorothy-masuka-has-died/">died</a> at the <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/dorothy-masuka-dead-at-83/">age of 83</a>. She was an African musician of note, but also much more.</p>
<p>I was once shown the script for a biopic purporting to tell the early story of the late singer. It was highly professional, but a shallow, deeply patriarchal thing in which Masuku’s pioneering work as a composer, her acute and precocious political consciousness and proud pan-Africanism were sidelined in favour of a narrative of affairs and flirtations. </p>
<p>The sidelining continued. Masuku was not simply the “jazz singer” many newscasts have labelled her, although she certainly was that too. And she certainly had a life worthy of a serious biopic.</p>
<p>Yes, Masuku was a singer. But she was so much more: a composer, a hero of the struggle, and an architect of the discourse of popular African liberation music.</p>
<h2>Her early years</h2>
<p>Masuku was born in Bulawayo in then Rhodesia in 1935. Her father was a chef, originally from Zambia, but her mother, Liza Mafuyani, was a Zulu-speaking South African whose family originated from the province of KwaZulu-Natal, and whose sister lived in Soweto. </p>
<p>Her maternal grandmother had been a sangoma. Masuku spoke later of the spiritual sources of inspiration for her songs. They often came to her in dreams, and she would immediately sing them to somebody else in the house, so that elusive memory was captured.</p>
<p>The young Dorothy moved to live with her aunt in South Africa in 1947, aged 12, when, on health grounds – she had asthma – she was enrolled at St Thomas Convent School in Johannesburg. There, she joined the school choir and her talent was immediately spotted.</p>
<p>She was signed to the Troubadour record label in her early teens after impressive performances at her school concerts. She worked with the greatest bands of the period. </p>
<p>Historical narratives of jazz in that era focus on the solidarity among male musicians. But when Masuku spoke of those days at a recent panel discussion, she revealed a different story. There were links and solidarities among women musicians, from her tuition in Yiddish lyrics with actress <a href="http://esat.sun.ac.za/index.php/Sarah_Sylvia">Sarah Sylvia</a> to the protection from male predation that she, as one of the youngest performers, was given by the older women on those tours.</p>
<h2>Major hit status</h2>
<p>During her teens, Masuku composed and recorded close to 30 singles, several of which achieved major hit status. In the mid 1950s, <em>Zonk</em> music magazine opined that the only artist who was outselling Masuku in South Africa was American crooner Bing Crosby. She later wryly noted that the rewards were never commensurate. She’d be bought a dress, or given “spending money” for her work, never a contract, wage or royalties.</p>
<p>Masuku wrote and recorded in Zimbabwe, and also in multiple other African languages in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. Her work was also performed by other South African artists in exile, notably <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a>. Because of the fragmented, semi-formal nature of the African recording industry in the 20th Century, no complete discography of all her credits exists, but it is likely the total of her compositions in all African languages exceeds 100.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A Masuku liberation song – ‘Bazuka’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was the radical spirit of Masuku’s songwriting that led to her long years of exile. Under apartheid black South Africans were notoriously <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">forced</a> to carry a range of documents on their person. Masuku’s song from 1957, <em>Zono Zam</em>, was recorded during the anti-pass campaign: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s so hard in this world: Lord, help us to be free. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two of her other songs, <em><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/daniel-francois-malan">Dr Malan</a></em> (“…has difficult laws”), named after Prime Minister, DF Malan, who lead the National Party with its policy of apartheid, to power in 1948, and <em>Lumumba</em> (speculating about who murdered the Congolese anti-colonial leader, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/patrice-lumumba">Patrice Lumumba</a> so infuriated the South African police’s notorious Special Branch that they seized and destroyed the master tapes. No copies can now be found. </p>
<p><em>Dr Malan</em> was the first South African song by any artist – let alone a young woman not long out of school, and not yet 20 – to call out an apartheid minister by name.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Dorothy Masuku celebrating African leaders with her song ‘Ghana’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Masuku clearly and explicitly identified herself with African nationalist liberation struggles. After travelling across Africa, she was moved by the ANC to London. She performed at the London Palladium, for BBC-TV, and in various shows with musicians Sir John <a href="http://www.quarternotes.com/john.htm">Dankworth</a> and <a href="http://www.quarternotes.com/Cleo.htm">Cleo Laine</a>. </p>
<p>Later, she spent a brief period back in then Rhodesia, fleeing again to Zambia ahead of Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith’s Special Branch. She spent 16 years in Zambia, performing and earning a living as an air hostess – pioneering that career as an elegant, intelligent independent woman with one of the earliest independent African airlines.</p>
<h2>Persona non grata</h2>
<p>During her 31 years of exile, she was repeatedly refused entry to South Africa by the apartheid authorities, having been declared persona non grata.</p>
<p>She returned only in 1992 and immediately began performing and composing new material, something she continued to do to the end of her life. She recorded four further original albums, as well as releasing a collection of much of her historic material, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/za/album/hamba-nontsokolo/1216341590"><em>Hamba Nontsokolo</em></a>.</p>
<p>Masuku featured in all South Africa’s major jazz festivals. Two years ago, she starred in the New York Town Hall concert commemorating the Jazz Epistles alongside Abdullah Ibrahim and Ekaya.</p>
<p>She was always a compelling performer, and never failed to draw standing ovations. I once stood behind her in a bank queue on a sweltering day. Joining the rest of us in loudly complaining about the intolerable temperatures, she ended her contribution to the chat with a short, mesmerising single chorus of <em>It’s Too Darn Hot</em>.</p>
<h2>Music was her life</h2>
<p>The last time I met her, last year, she was animatedly discussing buying a new home. She wanted trees and birdsong around her to create a peaceful space for yet more composition.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">In conversation with Kaya FM’s Nicky Blumenfield.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Music, she told South Africa’s public broadcaster, was like breathing for her: it was her life. A stroke late last year took her out of public life, and she died on 23 February 2019. </p>
<p><em>Hamba Kahle</em>: may her great spirit rest in peace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Songstress Dorothy Masuku once told South Africa’s public broadcaster that music was like breathing for her.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/916702018-04-09T14:54:29Z2018-04-09T14:54:29ZAn appreciation of South Africa’s jazz stalwart Jonas Gwangwa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212255/original/file-20180327-109175-tz2jim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C338%2C1985%2C1730&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performing in Germany in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music galore marked the passing early in 2018 of two South African titans of culture, Poet Laureate <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a> and trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>. Notable at their memorial events were powerfully moving tributes by two veterans still living: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/biography-caiphus-semenya">Caiphus Semenya</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>. They have shared stages and the perils of exile with both. </p>
<p>Semenya and Gwangwa’s histories raise a persistent question – why, given the scale of their achievements, are they not more famous? The answer may be rooted in the prominence of live performance over composition: everybody remembers the man or woman on stage. Fewer enquire about who wrote – let alone arranged – the song.</p>
<p>So the 80-year-old Jonas Mosa Gwangwa can command instant warmth and recognition on stage, singing or playing trombone. That music has won him friends and fans around the world. The democratic South African government acknowledged his role in, as they termed it, “singing down apartheid” with the Order of Ikhamanga (Gold) in 2010. But even the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/jonas-gwangwa">citation</a> for that award omitted much about the scope of his work as composer, arranger and director of stage shows.</p>
<p>Gwangwa was born in Orlando East, outside Johannesburg in 1937. As a student, he became a founder-member of the influential Huddleston Jazz Band alongside Masekela. And, like his contemporary, he also moonlighted wherever there was band work – for example, in trumpeter Elijah Nwanyane’s Rhythm Kings. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa often performed in Elijah’s Rhythm Kings.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When American pianist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/05/obituaries/john-mehegan-jazz-pianist-wrote-4-volume-textbook.html">John Mehegan</a> visited South Africa in the late 1950s, Gwangwa was one of the improvisers with whom he chose to work.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performed with John Mehegan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those and other collaborations led, in turn, to the 1960 release of the <a href="http://revive-music.com/2011/06/21/the-jazz-epistles-jazz-epistle-verse-1/">“Jazz Epistles, Verse One”</a>. It was the first LP released by black modern jazz players in South Africa. It also featured <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a>, Masekela, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abdullah-ibrahim">Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim)</a> and more. As Gwangwa told me in my book <em><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">Soweto Blues</a></em> (2004):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kippie got interested in both Hugh and I because we were attempting all those Charlie Parker things, and Kippie said: ‘Oh, so you like this music? Come here, let me teach you…’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was during the making of the Jazz Epistles album that Gwangwa began to compose: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I sat at the piano, messing around until I came up with this tune <em>Carol’s Drive</em>… a style was being formulated, of course, only I was not aware of this… I was thinking that I could improvise so why can’t I compose?</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Jazz Epistles with the Gwangwa composition, ‘Carol’s Drive’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His music writing skills grew when he was engaged as a copyist and pit player for the famous musical <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">“King Kong”</a>. When the production toured abroad in 1961, Gwangwa was one of many cast members who chose not to return to apartheid South Africa after the show’s run concluded. He ended up with Masekela at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. </p>
<p>Gwangwa played a pivotal role in selling South African music to initially uninterested US audiences. He was arranger and orchestra director on Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba’s 1965 Grammy winning album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/an-evening-with-belafonte-makeba-mw0000453025">“An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte”</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Train Song’ from ‘An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the following decade, he also had his own projects, touring with Masekela and Semenya in the band, Union of South Africa, alongside American jazz band, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-crusaders-mn0000136075">The Crusaders</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Union of South Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gwangwa also released infectious Afro-pop with his band African Explosion.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa’s band African Explosion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politically meaningful</h2>
<p>But, increasingly, the necessity to do something more politically meaningful with his music was becoming. As Gwangwa told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I figured that before I became an Americanised African, I have to go home and… grab a little kryptonite.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the early 1980s he was summoned by the president of the then banned <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> to assist with a group of young musicians in the ANC training camps in Angola who wanted to perform. The result was a musical, called <em>Amandla!</em>. With its slick, disciplined stagecraft, varied programming, comedy, dance routines and original as well as traditional and struggle songs,<a href="http://www.peripherycenter.org/music/music-anti-apartheid-south-africa"> <em>Amandla!</em></a> was light years away from simplistic agit-prop.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The track ‘Sasol’ from the original musical ‘Amandla!’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The script-line was kept sharply up to date:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always added or changed something to tally with whatever’s happening inside the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Between tours, Gwangwa spent as much time as he could in the ANC’s military camps, rehearsing, scouting new talent and sharing the risks. After a vehicle accident in Angola shattered his leg, he spent more time in Botswana, working with the Gaborone-based Medu Arts Ensemble. It was there that much of his best loved <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/pure-sounds-of-africa/987954418">material</a> was developed.</p>
<p>The physical perils of exile manifested tragically on 14 June 1985 when the South African Defence Force <a href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/gaborone_raid.htm?tab=report">raided Gaborone</a>, killing more than a dozen people, many connected with Medu. For weeks afterwards, unmarked vehicles with South African number plates spied on Gaborone. One hunted Gwangwa through the streets until he evaded it in the narrow alleys of an informal settlement.</p>
<h2>Shortlisted for an Oscar</h2>
<p>In 1987, Gwangwa worked with UK composer George Fenton on the soundtrack for the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092804/">“Cry Freedom”</a>, based on the friendship between newspaper editor Donald Woods and civil rights activist, Steve Biko. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cry-Freedom-Original-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B000002O5E">music</a> was shortlisted for an Oscar and multiple other international awards, winning both an Ivor Novello and a Black Emmy award. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The title track from the soundtrack of ‘Cry Freedom’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Gwangwa continued to perform – he played at both the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/british-anti-apartheid-movement-hosts-concert-mandela">1988 Nelson Mandela Birthday Concert</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b78f7">1990 Mandela release concerts in London</a> – that exposure opened additional doors to composing opportunities. Back home, by the mid-1990s his name was both a regular feature on music festival programmes, and a regular pop-up on film in composers’ credits. Since his return home, he has released eight albums.</p>
<p>Although composing now dominates his time, Gwangwa is still a powerfully compelling live artist. It may be a cliché, but one that is sometimes true: Gwangwa’s music at two memorial services for Kgositsile earlier this year – reprising songs that Medu veterans remember well from Botswana – really did not leave a dry eye in the house.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa at a memorial service for Keorapetse Kgositsile.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South African jazz veteran Jonas Gwangwa has been getting recognition for the pivotal role he played in ‘singing down apartheid.’Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.